Born with a Defect

Instead of treating parenting as a miracle, Christopher Titus spends his seventh self-released special arguing that children are essentially a curse. His core thesis is that humans are the only species born with a design defect: a total lack of survival instinct. While a newborn dolphin immediately knows how to swim, a human baby requires years of constant vigilance just to avoid choking on a Cheerio. To Titus, bringing a newborn home is equivalent to buying an expensive laptop that refuses to turn on and constantly shits itself.

Filmed at the Center Theater in Escondido, California, the performance finds the former sitcom star leaning into the autobiographical storytelling that became his signature after his network television run. Released in late 2016 through his own production company, Combustion Films, the show spent multiple weeks on the Billboard Top Ten Comedy charts. Titus builds a case that childless couples are the actual winners of adulthood. He contrasts the lifetime cost of raising teenagers with buying a Lamborghini, eventually bringing the performance around to a concluding note on why surviving childhood at all is a minor miracle.